Suggestion for 3D spacechip-based F2P Exploration career MMO's?

nuggetmatic · June 2014

I'm kinda new to this whole MMO thing so forgive me if this is the completely wrong forum to be asking this, however it seemed like google was getting me nowhere.

I've been curious about trying out one of these spaceship-based MMO's like Eve Online. I'm not so much for the whole combat angle so that eleminates a lot of the F2P options, and some of those are 2d and no offense but I don't want to feel like I'm playing a game from 1994.

I was wandering if there are any MMO's out there that are free to play, allow you to pilot, customize, whatever your ship, have an exploration career available (such as discovering jump points, planets and systems and getting naming rights as well as selling locations of bounties to bounty hunters and asteroid fields to miners and such by the use of stealth and electronic warfare and countermeasures) since I find the idea of that exciting.

I'm open to suggestions, if it's not free-to-play or it's 2d but you think it's good enough that I have to try it anyway (and includes a free trial), I'll give it a shot, but only if there are no other options available.

Quizzical · June 2014

The more requirements you put on a game, the less likely it is that any particular game can check off every single box for you--especially when you're requiring peculiar things that very few games offer. The only MMO I'm aware of in which you can really make a career out of exploration (as opposed to exploration as a really inefficient way to find out what's already on the wiki) is Uncharted Waters Online. But that's 16th century ships in the ocean based, not space based.

nuggetmatic · June 2014

So even with a game like EVE there's no point in exploration?

markh777 · June 2014

Theres a decent set up for exploring in Eve, HOWEVER....its a Pvp based game and you could get ganked exploring, doing mishes, etc....not sure what space based mmo has a better pve/exploration set up...I'd be interested in it too

Quizzical · June 2014

UWO has over 2000 things in the game to discover. Some of them have a quest where you talk to NPCs in various places to find out where to go and end up discovering something or other. Others have maps that you can pick up in libraries to point you toward something to find. Making either type of discovery increases your levels and skill ranks and rewards you with money and occasionally items. Most of the best land weapons in the game come from making discoveries. Exploration is a major game mechanic, not just something that you can do on your own if you don't care about gold or experience.

I'm not aware of any other game that has done anything analogous. Giving you a token amount of experience or a title the first time you enter a region is not at all similar to this. In UWO, probably an outright majority of the quests are to go discover something. Go discover Niagara Falls, go discover Rapa Nui (Easter Island), go discover Komodo Dragons, go discover the Ark of the Covenant, go discover Excalibur (and then you can use it in combat--and it's the best sword in the game), etc. Does EVE do that? For that matter, does any other game ever made do that?

nuggetmatic · June 2014

Originally posted by markh777
Theres a decent set up for exploring in Eve, HOWEVER....its a Pvp based game and you could get ganked exploring, doing mishes, etc....not sure what space based mmo has a better pve/exploration set up...I'd be interested in it too

I guess I wouldn't really mind having to watch my back in low security areas, comes with the territory. As long as I'm not forced into conflict and have the option to run away or hide in a nebula or cloak and wait it out or something like that. EVE is what, $10 a month?

nuggetmatic · June 2014

Originally posted by Quizzical Giving you a token amount of experience or a title the first time you enter a region is not at all similar to this.

While being able to name a newly discovered region may not be a big deal to you, I think it's something I'd be into. To each his own. Basically any space-based MMO where as part of exploration includes any of the following features I'd be interested to check out:

Naming newly discovered planets and/or systems.
DIscovering Jump Points/Stargates/whatever FTL thing is used in-universe and selling that information.
Using stealth and/or specialized sensors to detect and identify ships with a bounty on them and being able to sell that information to bounty hunters.
Being able to sell the locations of discovered asteroid fields to miners.

Skaioverride · June 2014

then you might want to wait for Star Citizen, No Man's Sky and Elite: Dangerous. all coming out within the next year or 2, if you cant wait, the closest thing might be Evochron or Star Trek Online

Pynda · June 2014

I've been becoming more and more convinced that both Star Citizen and Elite Dangerous are going to be strongly focused on (simplistic style) shooting. But who knows until they are actually released.

How about Earth and Beyond? It's an old MMO, but it is free unless you'd like to voluntarily donate. I've never played it myself, but a lot of people seemed to think it was a very decent game.

http://www.net-7.org/

Echh, okay linking has definitely been nerfed at mmorpg.com now. Just great. You'll have to copy and paste my link.